looked impatient. ‘My father and the nanny saw you yesterday, and she recognised the same car parked in the same place today. They thought your behaviour was suspicious, and called me.’
On a cell phone, she presumed. They hadn’t yet returned from the beach. ‘I wanted to be sure Dominic was still here. And being properly cared for.’
‘He’s had the best care possible,’ Zandro said.
‘The best that money can buy, you mean.’ Allowing her scepticism to show. ‘You hired a nanny.’
His head tilted slightly. ‘My mother is no longer able to keep up with a lively young child. And I have a business to run. Barbara is highly qualified and came from a very reputable agency. She’s extremely competent.’
‘A professional can’t afford to get too emotionally involved with her charges.’
‘A good nanny is better for a child than an incompetent mother.’
‘Incompetent?’ Her voice shook with anger.
He was looking austere again. ‘You know you were incapable of looking after a child, Lia.’
‘A temporary state!’ she argued. ‘That you took advantage of to snatch Dominic away!’
‘We took responsibility for a vulnerable member of our family. His safety and wellbeing was our first priority. He’s a Brunellesci, after all.’
‘He’s a Cameron!’
‘The fact that his father didn’t marry you is immaterial,’ Zandro said. ‘Rico’s name is on the birth certificate, and my parents have accepted Nicky as their grandchild.’
‘That doesn’t make him yours—or theirs.’ If the Brunellescis had charge of his upbringing, would they turn that laughing, innocent little boy into an unfeeling, hard-headed brute in a business suit, like his uncle and his grandfather? It didn’t bear thinking of. ‘A mother’s claim comes first.’ Rashly she added, ‘Any court would back that!’
‘The court would take into account the best interests of the child. A mother with a drug dependency who abandoned her baby isn’t a very trustworthy prospect.’
‘I don’t…’ She should probably have expected this, but she could feel herself shaking, and clenched her hands to hide it. ‘He wasn’t abandoned, and you’re wrong. I don’t have a drug dependency.’
‘You’re clean?’ He cast her a razor-edged look. ‘You look better,’ he conceded. ‘But how long can you stay away from the stuff?’
Her teeth snapped together. ‘I was never an addict. My mind was…was mixed up.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ he said dryly. ‘You hardly knew what day it was, and as for looking after a newborn baby—if I hadn’t stepped in Nicky would have been sent to a child welfare home.’
‘I was in shock! Grieving for your brother, my…my—’
‘Your lover,’ Zandro supplied.
‘The father of my child! The child you took away.’
After that, to Lia nothing had seemed to matter any more. She’d taken pills to ease the pain, to help her sleep, to blot out the world and its cruelty. Until time and emotion blurred and she was living in another dimension, a blessedly vague world where she felt nothing, remembered nothing, knew nothing except that she had to have more pills, and more…
‘I tried to help you,’ Zandro said.
A renewed flare of anger rose. She must stay calm, keep her wits about her. ‘I don’t recall that you ever offered help,’ she said flatly.
He looked exasperated, then almost weary. ‘I don’t suppose you recall much at all, zonked out of your skull as you were.’
A faint unease stirred deep down. Had things happened at that time that she didn’t know about?
Sounds at the front door interrupted them. It opened and there were voices in the hall.
Instinctively she turned her head, catching a glimpse of the nanny crossing the hallway, the baby in her arms.
Without thought she took a step towards them, but Zandro’s hand closed about her arm, and she halted, then pulled away from him.
The old man appeared, blocking her view, and came to a stop in the doorway of the room, leaning on his cane.
At the sight of her he straightened, and his expression turned icy. Shifting his gaze to Zandro, he said, his accent betraying his Italian origin, ‘What is that woman doing here?’
It felt like a slap in the face. Renewed antipathy surfaced as she squared her shoulders and confronted him. ‘I have a name, Mr. Brunellesci,’ she said. ‘Lia.’ She pronounced it like a challenge. ‘And a right to my son.’
‘You have no rights!’ He thumped his cane on the tiled floor. Stepping into the room, he waved the walking stick at her before using it to steady himself, his knuckles whitening. ‘How can you dare to come here again?’
‘Papa,’ Zandro interrupted, his voice quiet but authoritative, ‘don’t upset yourself. I’ll deal with this.’
The old man’s glare swivelled to his son. If Domenico had mellowed in old age it certainly wasn’t apparent now. Finally he nodded, perhaps satisfied that Zandro was as relentless as himself, and with a parting haughty scowl at the intruder and a muttered word that sounded like ‘Cagna!’ he turned and left the room, the muffled tapping of his stick gradually fading.
Zandro said, ‘Please sit, Lia.’
After a slight hesitation she did so, back straight, not sinking into the tempting softness. ‘What did he call me?’
Zandro remained standing. A movement of his hand dismissed her question. ‘It’s not important. How’s your wrist?’
Numbed. ‘I’m sure it will be all right.’ But she would retain the compress a little longer. He’d find it harder to throw her out while she still had it on. ‘Your father hates me.’
‘He loves Nicky.’
As if it followed logically. ‘Is it love?’ she queried. ‘Or possessiveness?’ Dominic, named after his grandfather at Rico’s wish, was the senior Brunellesci’s only grandchild, the sole member of the new generation. ‘You’re not married yet, are you?’ she asked Zandro. ‘If you have children, what happens to Dominic?’
He frowned. ‘He will still be Rico’s son, a Brunellesci. Nothing can change that.’
‘He’s my son, too. Nothing can change that.’
A flicker of acknowledgement momentarily lessened the chilly hostility in his eyes. Then his mouth hardened and the pitiless expression returned. ‘You relinquished your rights.’
‘You bullied me into signing those papers when I couldn’t stand up to you!’
‘Bullied?’
